ROM Hacking DiscussionGeneral discussions about all things fan games. Topics relating to both ROM hacks and custom games are welcome here. Posting links to ROMs is illegal and is not tolerated anywhere on the forum.

If you need some pointers on the difference between hacking and game development, as well as the advantages of each, have a look through the Daily article! It might just help you plan your own project :)

Pros:
I think the biggest advantage of a GBA Game/ROM Hack is that it's automatically a cross platform game that you can also play on mobile. The 60fps is a nice tack on because the GBA's refresh rate is locked on ~60 fps.

I'm not sure if the tools sentiment applies to Gen II or Gen I hacking which are already using the Disms, in gen III however, A-map is probably the only problem child. XSE does it's job in compiling scripts, and most misc tasks we have commandline tools for automation.

The barrier to entry in making a basic ROM Hack is pretty much zero though. There exists ROM base patches or dynamic engine resources which will update your ROM to near latest gen with a lot of cool features in a few clicks. You *could* make a game without seeing a single line of C or ASM, as our predecessors did in a lot of the 2014 HOTY and earlier hacks. Overall not having to make a game engine or write any custom code is probably a reason ROM hacking Gen III boomed around 2008.

ROM hacks are also really popular and there are plenty of hacks to extract example implementations from. Most of our customized code is open source and available for modification/download for those who wish to do that.

Cons:
You do feel the limitations on the GBA when working with the smaller screen resolution and limited color depth. It's not exactly the fastest engine either, and emulators are often inconsistent with code implementations working on some emulators but not on others. Binary ROM development debugging tools are also pretty limited, and A-map can turn sour if you look at it the wrong way.

As for writing custom code, using GF's functions abstract a lot of the math and hardware implications, but its still necessary. IO mapped registers can be a pain sometimes, and a lot of cool tricks aren't documented anywhere (128x128 OAMs, Hardware Blending single sprite when multiple share the same obj window/priority ect.)

<p>Some of the tools, including XSE, are black boxes, buggy, or not cross-platform. And, the map editor? Very important, and it's the biggest, buggiest, black box we have. Gulp.</p><p>I proofread already so I can't offer anything new other that I'm happy with the article and how it summarises things. But yeah.</p>

You're right. Cross platform on a lot of tools is an issue. There are alternatives for Mac\linux users like Red Alien (actually open source). I'm not sure about map editors though...I think you're stuck running A-map on a VM. There are open source, cross platform trainer editors and what have you as well.

Hi, I'm new to this forum and to rom hacking, but I want it to be one of my entry-ways into writing code and making games. I was wondering, is there a(n easy) way to combine code from multiple games into one rom hack? I'm curious to try mixing a regular pokemon game with a mystery dungeon game, or a LoZ game with let's say Golden Sun. Is this doable? If so, how much trouble is it? Would it be better to write things from scratch? Thanks :)

If you need some pointers on the difference between hacking and game development, as well as the advantages of each, have a look through the Daily article! It might just help you plan your own project :)

I think the article was a good start but failed to include any information about Generation 1 and 2 hacking. I think it's a very viable base these days since you aren't limited to outdated tools like Advanced Map and the game is completely disassembled into code, giving you quite literally full control.

Don’t have a Windows computer? No playing or developing Essentials fangames for you.

That's a bit incorrect, almost every Essentials fangame works with WINE so it's really good workaround at least for playing those games. You don't even need to extract RGSSAD/RGSS2A/RGSS3A files anymore.

Inferior performance. Pokémon Essentials is locked at 40 frames per second

Quote:

Originally Posted by From RPG Maker XP manual

Graphics.frame_rate
In [Smooth Mode], the number of times the screen is refreshed per second. The larger the value, the more CPU power is required. Normally set at 40. When not in [Smooth Mode], the refresh rate is halved, and graphics are drawn in every other frame.

Changing this property is not recommended; however, it can be set anywhere from 10 to 120. Values out of range are automatically corrected.

A considerable side effect was: speed up the entire game. So you need to adjust everything with bigger pauses/times.

I miss three big cons on Game Dev:

PAID engine! RPG Maker XP is $25 on Steam.

You are limited to 999 maps. Sounds a comprehensible limit, but if you use several cities, houses and multi part for routes, this number won't sound too big.

Since all script files are saved on a single file. Collaborative work on repositories like GitHub and so on won't work very well.

Pros:
I think the biggest advantage of a GBA Game/ROM Hack is that it's automatically a cross platform game that you can also play on mobile. The 60fps is a nice tack on because the GBA's refresh rate is locked on ~60 fps.

I'm not sure if the tools sentiment applies to Gen II or Gen I hacking which are already using the Disms, in gen III however, A-map is probably the only problem child. XSE does it's job in compiling scripts, and most misc tasks we have commandline tools for automation.

The barrier to entry in making a basic ROM Hack is pretty much zero though. There exists ROM base patches or dynamic engine resources which will update your ROM to near latest gen with a lot of cool features in a few clicks. You *could* make a game without seeing a single line of C or ASM, as our predecessors did in a lot of the 2014 HOTY and earlier hacks. Overall not having to make a game engine or write any custom code is probably a reason ROM hacking Gen III boomed around 2008.

ROM hacks are also really popular and there are plenty of hacks to extract example implementations from. Most of our customized code is open source and available for modification/download for those who wish to do that.

Cons:
You do feel the limitations on the GBA when working with the smaller screen resolution and limited color depth. It's not exactly the fastest engine either, and emulators are often inconsistent with code implementations working on some emulators but not on others. Binary ROM development debugging tools are also pretty limited, and A-map can turn sour if you look at it the wrong way.

As for writing custom code, using GF's functions abstract a lot of the math and hardware implications, but its still necessary. IO mapped registers can be a pain sometimes, and a lot of cool tricks aren't documented anywhere (128x128 OAMs, Hardware Blending single sprite when multiple share the same obj window/priority ect.)

For you, for someone who's a noob in scripting, is a rom hack more appealing than PE ?

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